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Is it possible to avoid buying from Amazon?
The seller did not identify themselves as Amazon. I was dismayed to receive an Amazon Prime envelope. Can anyone share tips on better identifying sellers and shippers? Thanks.
5 comments
jacbarcollectibles
Mentor11 months agoSome eBay sellers also sell on Amazon and will use their fulfillment services to ship their items for both sites. This is eBay legal. However, if the seller is just purchasing the item from an Amazon seller and having it shipped to you this is not eBay legal. If you receive the item with a guest receipt in the package then this is a problem.
eburtonlab
Mentor11 months agoSome eBay sellers also sell on Amazon and will use their fulfillment services to ship their items for both sites. This is eBay legal.
My understanding is that sellers using multi-channel fulfillment via Amazon have their packages shipped by Amazon in plain boxes or envelopes.
Amazon-branded packages and envelopes are supposed to be reserved exclusively for items purchased directly on Amazon.
eburtonlab
Mentor11 months ago@mitch4chicago2014
It happens because you are buying from a seller that is drop-shipping from Amazon in violation of eBay and Amazon policies.
It is against policy to fulfill an eBay order by drop-shipping from a retailer. But that alone does not stop some folks from attempting just that.
By choosing to avoid doing business with drop-shippers generally, you can avoid retail drop-shippers and triangulation scammers specifically.
It may not be possible to always identify in advance those sellers who drop-ship, but it is possible to identify some common characteristics of illicit retail drop-shippers or other under-performing sellers, and thus avoid the worst of them.
Often they can be spotted by a combination of low feedback number, free shipping of heavy items where it would not be profitable to use retail shipping, use of stock photos, high handling time (not necessarily if they are using Amazon or Walmart, though), poor feedback received with complaints of delays and wrong items or out of stock cancellations, very odd item selection and/or quantities like items were chosen at random from a catalog, canned item descriptions scraped from another site that exactly match many other similar listings, differences between registration location on the feedback page and item location (or vague item location -- like "US, United States"), or inability to answer even basic questions about the items being sold.
mitch4chicago2014
OP11 months agoThank you. I'll try prescreening more carefully in future.
eburtonlab
Mentor11 months agoYou are welcome -- good luck!